WW1 German ships, part 2

With a little bit of spare time, I was able to make a little more progress with my WTJ 1/1800 ships. 

Magdeburg and Strassburg, and their masts.  I am not certain of the diameter of the brass rod used for the masts, but the yards are made of 0.006" brass wire (the long piece in the pic above).  Again, the mounting holes for the masts are printed into the WTJ cruisers, so just a bit of glue and in they go.

It is a different story with the TB's.  Their masts are also made from the thin brass wire, but I had to use a drill bit to make a hole for them.  I did not put yards on the masts for the TB's.

All of my 1/1800 ships now have their masts, although it is a bit hard to see from that angle.  Primer will make it much easier to see - more pics after that!

WW1 Russian ships, part 3

Inspiration can strike suddenly, and this time I took advantage of the situation and worked on my WTJ ships a bit.

Here is my small flotilla of 1/1800 ships - German cruisers on the left, Russians on the right.  One can see that I have already primed the first Russian cruiser - Bogatyr - but I forgot one small detail... masts!  So, back to work.

I have some thin brass wire that I use for masts, and this time I decided to use plastic rod as well.

Before putting in the masts, I looked around for some pictures to help guide the work.  The WTJ ships have holes for masts already present in the model, in cruisers and larger at least, so siting the masts was not a problem, and I found a pair of pictures in one of my books - The Imperial Russian Navy by A.J. Watts - showing differences between Bogatyr and Oleg.  The book shows that Oleg has a slightly different bridge structure, without searchlight wings, and the masts are slightly different also.

In the pics below, one can just barely see the trimmed bridgework on Oleg, the rightmost cruiser.

Bogatyr from the bow

Oleg from the bow

It will be difficult to see the change until I get some primer on him.

And, some simple masts:

Bogatyr (the grey one) has slightly shorter masts, and Oleg has a lookout position on the mainmast.  I think, after the fact, that using the plastic rod is a bit off for the yards.  I will not repeat it with the German ships but the rest of the Russians will, except using the same brass rod as the masts.

Egyptian ship books...

Hmmm, long time no post!  Hopefully, these will help me get back on track:

I was looking for information on the colors of ancient Egyptian ships, and came across these on Amazon.  The book by Sintich is more about making models, and might not have much information on the colors of actual ships, but is very handy as it has plans for making scale ship models.  Besides, it was only $2.28 with free shipping, so I could not pass on it!  The Vinson books just arrived and I have yet to peruse it in depth.

The plan for my Bronze age ships is still as follows:  paint them up as historically plausible as possible, and use them for both historical battles and in my fantasy Tékumel battles.  No one, except the fine readers of this humble blog, will know the difference...

Russian ships, part 1

Not much progress here, as I am suffering from an increased work-load, and a sore and swollen left knee. My recent computer upgrade was more successful but just as time-consuming!

A small amount of work was accomplished, as seen here:


Basically, a before and after pic of the Russian destroyer Novik. The Navwar mini appears to be the WW2 version, also known as Yakov Sverdlov. I trimmed down the tripod masts and added pole masts of brass rod. It is still not quite the correct profile for Novik, but it is close.

German cruisers, part 1

It has not been all Ironclads work here - the WW1 ships have been getting some attention also. And to prove it, here are some work-in-progress pics:



SMS Prinz Adalbert, ready for primer. I added some masts using brass rod.






SMS Roon.


Both minis required a bit of work with knife and file, and I see that I missed a gap in the second stack on Roon. Nothing too serious though. I do think that these will paint up faster than their WTJ counterparts, as the Navwar minis have a bit less detail. Once all of the ships are on the table, fully painted, it will not matter much.

Italian ironclads, part 1

I sat down at the hobby table to try out an idea for the Figurehead ironclads. Almost all of these ships come with spars and sails set as a separate piece from the masts. Steam-driven ships would not normally have their sails set especially in a battle so it does look odd for the ships to be equipped this way. So, I have tried an experiment to make a ship look better:


Here is Re d'Italia with new spars added to replace the sails.


I used the original sail pieces to get the length of each spar. The new spar is a piece of thin plastic rod. Then, I notched the mast with a sharp knife at the location I wanted a spar, to maximise the surface area for the glue. Add a bit of super-glue, and the spar goes on. After it dried I added another small drop of super-glue to the join to coat over the entire area, hopefully to strengthen it.

What do you think? To me it looks good; I don't think that I will try to add furled sails to the spars. I am worried that they will break from handling during game-play, but hopefully the players will listen when I tell them to handle the ships by their base! I am also going to leave the jib and stay sails on the ship; that might be a bit too much...

Notes on Figurehead ironclads

Just a couple of observations on the fine ironclads from Figurehead...


The first point is minor: all of the Figurehead ironclads, all of them steam-powered, have sails set. I could probably live with that point; it does not seem to detract from the models at all. But, if one wanted a bit more realism, the sails would need to go. On Regina Maria Pia and her sisters, it would be easier than others as the sails of the fore and main masts are actually separate from the mast itself. Others in the Figurehead line have the sails cast as part of the masts, making replacement of the entire piece necessary. For me, more thinking is required before getting my clippers ready.

The second point is more important, at least to me: the base is too small. I would like to put some labeling on the base itself and the included base, although sculpted with a nice wave effect, has no room for labels.


Here is Regina Maria Pia resting upon a 1" x 2" metal base. I think that a centimeter or some would be enough at the stern for the labels .


Is 1" too wide? Or maybe I should apply the label along the broadside edge of the base???

Dutch BC mini

Ken Hall has made a nice conversion for a never-constructed Dutch BC, the pic is here - link



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